The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

Friday, April 21, 2017

It is an integral part of the Palestinian strategy to undermine, isolate, delegitimize and destroy Israel.

It is an integral part of the Palestinian strategy to undermine, isolate, delegitimize and destroy Israel.

It is not only Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas who
is in trouble. Marwan Barghouti, too, knows better than to air dirty
Fatah laundry. What, then, is to be done? The traditional diversionary
tactic: Direct the heat towards Israel.

Stripped of its Western trappings, Barghouti's "hunger strike" is
actually a struggle between Abbas and yet another Fatah pretender to
the throne. And once again, Israel -- the state that supposedly so
"mistreats" incarcerated Palestinian terrorists -- takes the heat.

Palestinians have an old habit of settling internal scores by
diverting their grievances and violence towards Israel. This practice is
clear to those who have been monitoring developments in the Palestinian
arena for the past decades. It is an integral part of the Palestinian
strategy to undermine, isolate, delegitimize and destroy Israel.

Those less familiar with Palestinian culture and tactics, however,
have difficulty understanding the Palestinian mindset. Officials in
Washington, London, Paris and other Western capitals rarely meet the
ordinary Palestinian, the "man on the street" who represents the
authentic voice of the Palestinians.Instead, these officials meet Palestinian politicians and academics
from Ramallah -- the "experts" who are actually accomplished con
artists. Such Palestinians grasp the Western mindset very well, and use
their understanding to twist Western officials any which way they want.

The Western reaction to the hunger strike declared on April 17 by
Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails is a case in point. The
strike was initiated by Marwan Barghouti, a senior Fatah official who is
serving five life terms for his role in terror attacks against
Israelis. Barghouti has been in prison for 15 years so far.

Remarkably, despite Barghouti's long-term imprisonment, this is his
first hunger strike, apparently despite the poor incarceration
conditions that have supposedly driven him to this move. Or might there
be some other factor behind Barghouti's sudden acute discomfort?

The hunger strike is, in fact, completely unrelated to conditions in
Israeli prisons. Rather, Barghouti's hunger strike is directly linked to
a power struggle that has long been raging inside his Fatah faction.
More than a move against Israel, the hunger strike is aimed at
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas (who is also chairman
of Fatah).

Last November, Barghouti emerged as the biggest winner in Fatah's
internal election. His status as a prisoner and his involvement in
terrorism continue to be the main reason why he is so popular among
Palestinians. Barghouti's victory in the election meant that he was now
number two after Abbas, and many expected the PA president to appoint
him as his deputy.

This past February, however, the Fatah Central Council, a body
dominated by Abbas loyalists, delivered a deliberate slap in the face to
Barghouti, ignoring his landslide victory and appointing someone else
(Mahmoud Aloul) as Deputy Fatah Chairman. The appointment of Aloul
enraged Barghouti's supporters, who rushed to accuse Abbas and his
loyalists of sidelining the jailed Fatah leader and seeking to "bury"
him.

Barghouti's wife, Fadwa, even went as far as accusing
Abbas of "succumbing" to threats by Israel. Israeli officials had
strongly criticized the result of the Fatah internal election, which the
Barghouti won, calling it a vote for terrorism. Fadwa Barghouti said
that her husband had won the first slot in the election, "which means he
is number two in Fatah. There is no ignoring Marwan Barghouti's
position."

The charges leveled by Barghouti's wife against Abbas are not the first. In the past, she has accused Abbas
and the PA leadership of imposing a blackout on news concerning her
husband. In a letter to Abbas, she expressed "regret and pain" over the
failure of Abbas to help her in her campaign to secure the release of
her husband. She also complained that neither Fatah nor the PA
leadership had provided funds to support the campaign calling for her
husband's release.

It is no secret that Abbas detests competition. He has been waging
war against anyone who dares to challenge his rule, especially from
within his own Fatah faction. Mohammed Dahlan, for example, a former PA
security commander from the Gaza Strip and considered the number one
enemy of the PA president, was expelled from Fatah on orders from Abbas.
Dahlan, a Fatah parliamentarian, was stripped of his parliamentary
immunity by Abbas. Dahlan is currently living in the United Arab
Emirates, but is wanted by Abbas for "corruption" and "murder."

Barghouti, however, presents Abbas with an immediate problem. The
Palestinian on the street will not tolerate the defamation, at least not
in public, of any Palestinian sitting in Israeli prison. Abbas sees
Barghouti as a real threat, particularly in the wake of public opinion
polls suggesting that Barghouti could easily win any presidential
election. Barghouti at large would be a nightmare for Abbas.

So, no love is lost between Abbas and Barghouti; the two are engaged
in a behind-the-scenes power struggle. Barghouti wants to succeed Abbas,
while Abbas is working hard to marginalize him. Palestinian sources say
that Abbas is not happy with Barghouti's hunger strike. He believes
Barghouti is trying to steal the spotlight from him, especially on the
eve of his visit to Washington for talks with President Donald Trump.
Abbas, who wants to be in the news all the time, cannot stand that
Barghouti is grabbing the headlines and was even invited to write an
op-ed in the New York Times.

It is not only Abbas, however, who is in trouble. Barghouti, too,
knows better than to air dirty Fatah laundry. What, then, is to be done?
The traditional diversionary tactic: Direct the heat towards Israel.
Barghouti is suddenly concerned about his prison conditions and is
demanding more privileges. Israel, he claims, imprisons Palestinians for
their "peaceful resistance." Barghouti knows it is not popular to come
out in public against Abbas. Similarly, Abbas is using the hunger strike
to incite against Israel and demand that all Palestinian terrorists,
including ones with blood on their hands, be released unconditionally.
The hunger strike is a smokescreen for the real problems inside Fatah
and has nothing to do with the conditions of prisoners in Israeli jails.

Stripped of its Western trappings, Barghouti's "hunger strike" is
actually a struggle between Abbas and yet another Fatah pretender to the
throne. And once again, Israel -- the state that supposedly so
"mistreats" incarcerated Palestinian terrorists -- takes the heat.

Bassam Tawil, an Arab Muslim, is based in the Middle East.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10245/palestinians-hunger-strike Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Research by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting (CAMERA) shows that since the start of 2017, readers of the Times' op-ed pages have been fed a steady diet of one-sided, anti-Israel rhetoric.

It began on January 6, when the Times published an article
entitled "The Frightening Truth About Israeli Society." The article
provided a long list of allegations that Israel is allowing itself to be
diverted from its democratic values.

Three weeks later, an op-ed by Ayelet Waldman and her husband
Michael Chabon suggested the country should be viewed as responsible for
future Palestinian terror attacks. This was echoed more strongly last
month when Larry Derfner's opinion piece stated that Israel should be
blamed in any future war with Hezbollah or Hamas.

In the meanwhile, on February 11, Arab Knesset Member Ayman
Odeh was granted a platform on which to write "How Israel Bulldozes
Democracy." The piece accuses Israel of mistreating its Arab citizens;
CAMERA critiqued it as "so egregiously misleading, so full
of errors and distortions, that it feels like a theatrical attack
against a cartoonish villain."

Finally, on March 1, an op-ed insisted that PA chairman Mahmoud
Abbas actually "accepts Israel's Jewishness" and that Israel is
manipulatively concealing Abbas’s "true position" by claiming otherwise.
In fact, however, Abbas has repeatedly, explicitly, and emphatically
rejected Israel's Jewishness in recent years. The newspaper, CAMERA
states, has never corrected the false claim that Abbas accepts a Jewish
state.

Strangely, CAMERA also mentions an op-ed by Hevron Jewish Community spokesman Yishai Fleisher
as an example of The New York Times' one-sidedness against Israel. The
organization found two faults with the article: "By publishing an
Israeli who approvingly supports annexation of much of the West Bank…
[the paper] "underscore[s] all those accusations that Israel is a
land-hungry entity." In addition, the article included two criticisms of
the Israeli Government.

Surprisingly, CAMERA lumps together criticism of the Government
of Israel with criticism of and hostility to Israel in general. In
fact, however, while the latter borders on anti-Semitism, the former is
more than legitimate in any democratic society.

Let us also note the context of the "criticism:" Fleisher was
indicating that the government's PR policy ought to concentrate more on
the actual issues of Jewish rights to Judea and Samaria than on its
technological prowess and the like. Can this "criticism" of Israel be
compared in any way to accusations of Israeli apartheid and the like?

Would CAMERA truly prefer that the Times not publish op-eds by
members of Israel's nationalist camp? After all, an increasingly growing
number of its members support Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.
Does CAMERA mean to imply that any op-ed that does not push a soft
right-wing view is in some way harmful to Israel?

Unfortunately, CAMERA does not reassure us that this is not the
case, lamenting the fact that "there is no shortage of reputable,
moderate voices who would point out that Palestinians have flaws and,
most importantly, a great share of responsibility for the ongoing
conflict."

In conclusion, CAMERA chides the Times for the fact that "these
voices are largely missing from the newspaper of record. As a result,
while the anti-Israel invective flows, little pressure is placed on
Palestinians to crack down on rampant hate speech, to accept the Jewish
state’s right to exist, and to end the system in which anti-Israel
violence is in effect rewarded by payments to the family of attackers."

Hillel FendelSource: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/228346 Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

When U.S. airstrikes could have destroyed a terrorist regime, freed a nation and altered history.

“Where are the planes?!” kept crackling over U.S. Navy radios exactly 56 years ago this week. The U.S. Naval armada (22 ships including the Carrier Essex loaded with deadly Skyhawk jets.) was sitting 16 miles off the southern Cuban coast near an inlet known as Bahia de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs). The question — bellowed between blasts from a Soviet artillery and tank barrage landing around him — came from commander Jose San Roman.

“Send planes or we can’t last!” San Roman kept pleading to the very fleet that escorted his men to the beachhead (and sat much closer to them than the U.S. destroyers Porter and Ross sat to the Syrian coast this week.) Meanwhile the Soviet artillery barrage intensified, the Soviet T-34 and Stalin tanks closed in, and San Roman’s casualties piled up.

By that date the terrorists who ran (and still run) Cuba had been operating terror-training camps for two years, had kidnapped, tortured and murdered dozens of American (to say nothing of tens of thousands of Cubans.) A year later they wantonly brought Western civilization a whisker from nuclear destruction. If foreign terrorists ever merited a MOAB, it was these-- based 90 miles from U.S. shores.

Crazed by hunger and thirst the Cuban freedom-fighters had been shooting and reloading without sleep for three days. Many were hallucinating. By then many suspected they’d been abandoned by the Knights of Camelot.

That’s when Castro’s Soviet Howitzers opened up again, huge 122 mm ones, four batteries’ worth. They pounded 2,000 rounds into the freedom-fighters over a four-hour period. “It sounded like the end of the world,” one recalled later to your humble servant here.

“Rommel’s crack Afrika Corps broke and ran under a similar bombardment,” wrote Haynes Johnson in his book, the Bay of Pigs. By that time the invaders were dazed, delirious with fatigue, thirst and hunger, too deafened by the bombardment to even hear orders. But these men were in no mood to emulate Rommel’s crack Afrika Corps by retreating. Instead they were fortified by a resolve no conquering troops could ever call upon–the burning duty to free their nation from Castroism….

They were mostly civilian volunteers known as La Brigada 2506, an almost precise cross-section of Cuban society of the time. The Brigada included men from every social strata and race in Cuba — from sugar cane planters to sugar cane cutters, from aristocrats to their chauffeurs. But mostly, the folks in between, as befit a nation with a larger middle class than most of Europe.

Short on battle experience, yes, but they fairly burst with what Napoleon and Patton valued most in a soldier: morale. No navel-gazing about “why they hate us” or the merits of “regime change” for them. They’d seen Castroism point-blank.

Their goals were crystal-clear: firing-squads silenced, families reunited, tens of thousands freed from prisons, torture chambers and concentration camps. We see it on the History Channel after our GIs took places like Manila and Munich.

Well, in 1961 newsreels could have captured such scenes without crossing oceans. When those Cuban freedom-fighters hit the beach at the Bay of Pigs, one of every 18 Cubans suffered in Castro Gulag. Mass graves dotted the Cuban countryside, piled with hundreds who’d crumpled in front of Castro and Che Guevara’s firing squads. Most of the invaders had loved-ones among the above. Modern history records few soldiers with the burning morale of the Bay of Pigs freedom-fighters.

Camelot’s criminal idiocy of cancelling airstrikes made the Brigada’s lumbering B-26s easy prey for Castro's jets and fast Sea-Furies -- and the troops and supplies below them were even easier prey. It was a turkey shoot for the Castroites.

This finally brought Adm. Arleigh Burke of the Joints Chief of Staff, who was receiving the battlefield pleas, to the brink of mutiny. The fighting admiral was livid. They say his face was beet red and his facial veins popping as he faced down his commander-in-chief that fateful night of April 18, 1961. “Mr. President, TWO planes from the Essex!” that’s all those Cuban boys need, Mr. President. Let me order…!”

JFK was in white tails and a bow tie that evening, having just emerged from an elegant social gathering. “Burke,” he replied. “We can’t get involved in this.”

Admiral Burke’s pleas also proved futile. But the betrayal was too much for the Cuban freedom-fighters’ enraged and heartsick American trainers at the base in Nicaragua. These American airmen had closely bonded with their Cuban band-of-freedom-fighting brothers. “Their fight our our fight,” later related Lieut Col. Joe Shannon. “We were in this thing together.”

So four of the American airmen suited up, gunned the engines and joined the fight—but in the lumbering B-26 bombers the Brigada had been issued. These enraged and valiant pilots weren't pampered Ivy Leaguers. They were Alabama Air Guard officers, men with archaic notions of loyalty and honor. They had watched the decimation of the freedom-fighter pilots. They knew the odds. They went anyway.

All four died on that first mission. All four (Pete Ray, Riley Shamburger, Leo Barker, and Wade Grey) have their names in a place of honor alongside their fallen Cuban freedom-fighting comrades on The Bay of Pigs Memorial, plus streets named after them in Miami's Little Havana, plus their crosses at Miami's Cuban Memorial cemetery.

When Doug MacArthur waded ashore on Leyte, he grabbed a radio: "People of the Philippines: I have returned, “he declared in a strong but shaking voice. “By the grace of Almighty God our forces stand again on Philippine soil — soil consecrated in the blood of our two peoples."

Cuban soil was similarly consecrated.

The freedom-fighters’ spent ammo and lack of air cover inevitably forced a retreat. Castro’s jets and Sea Furies were roaming overhead at will and tens of thousands of his Soviet-led and armed troops and armor were closing in. The Castro planes now concentrated on strafing the helpless, ammo-less freedom-fighters.

“Can’t continue,” crackled over the navy radio handled by CIA trainer Grayston Lynch. It was Lynch’s friend San Roman again. “Have nothing left to fight with ...out of ammo…Russian tanks in view….destroying my equipment.”

“Tears flooded my eyes,” wrote multi-decorated WWII and Korea hero Grayston Lynch. “For the first time in my 37 years I was ashamed of my country.”

When the smoke cleared and their ammo had been expended to the very last bullet, when a hundred of them lay dead and hundreds more wounded, after three days of relentless battle, barely 1,400 of them—without air support (from the U.S. Carriers just offshore) and without a single supporting shot by naval artillery (from U.S. cruisers and destroyers poised just offshore)—had squared off against 21,000 Castro troops, his entire air force and squadrons of Soviet tanks. The Cuban freedom-fighters inflicted over 3000 casualties on their Soviet-armed and led enemies. This feat of arms still amazes professional military men.

“They fought magnificently and were not defeated,” stressed Marine Col. Jack Hawkins a multi-decorated WWII and Korea vet who helped train them. “They were abandoned on the beach without the supplies and support promised by their sponsor, the Government of the United States.”

Humberto FontovaSource: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/266440/bay-pigs-56-years-later-humberto-fontova Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

UNRWA's proposed changes are a step in the
right direction. The ‎PA's opposition is more proof that it is an
obstacle to any hope for a better life for ‎both Israeli and Palestinian
children.‎

It is an
article of faith for the international community and the Jewish Left
that the ‎Palestinian Authority is a moderate force that wants to make
peace with Israel. ‎That belief has been undermined by many of the PA's
actions and statements since ‎its creation after the signing of the Oslo
Accords in 1993, yet somehow it survives and forms the basis for many
of the assumptions critics make ‎about Israel's government.

The latest proof that
the PA is a principle obstacle to ‎peace rather than its best hope has
not received any attention in the Western press. ‎But a discussion of
the conflict that has arisen between it and the United Nations ‎Relief
and Works Agency speaks volumes about everything that is wrong ‎with the
PA.‎

UNRWA is the world body
that is devoted solely to aiding Palestinian refugees. ‎Unlike the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which is tasked with
helping all other refugees around the world, UNRWA doesn't try ‎to
resettle refugees or resolve their problems. On the contrary, since its
creation ‎after the Arab failure to destroy Israel in its War of
Independence, UNRWA has ‎helped to perpetuate the clash between Israel
and the Muslim and Arab worlds and ‎championed the "right of return"
that would spell Israel's end. Its schools and aid ‎projects have been
hotbeds of radicalism aimed at erasing the existence of the ‎Jewish
state and have even been used by Hamas. In particular, critics have
noted ‎the way UNRWA schools in the West Bank and Gaza have curricula
and textbooks ‎that teach up to 600,000 Palestinian youngsters to reject
Israel's legitimacy and ‎glorify the struggle to destroy it. ‎

But, like the rest of
the U.N., UNRWA has been feeling some pressure to ‎reform. The Trump
administration has shown a willingness to throw its weight ‎around that
directly contrasts with former President Barack Obama's support for the
U.N. Under ‎new Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who previously
headed the U.N.'s other ‎refugee agency, efforts to promote the libel
that Israel is an apartheid state were ‎rejected. So when the Arab press
reported leaks about a shift in UNRWA's ‎education policy, this seemed
to indicate that even that agency was feeling some ‎pressure to change
its ways.‎

According to those
reports, UNRWA was planning to alter the textbooks it uses ‎in its
schools. Among the planned changes, cities inside Israel would stop
being labeled as Palestinian, a practice that instills a sense in
readers that the Jewish state is ‎merely a colonialist intrusion built
entirely on "stolen" Arab land. Other changes ‎included an effort to
tone down praise of Palestinians who commit terrorism ‎against Jews and
Israelis. Its teaching about Jerusalem would treat it as a city that ‎is
as holy to all three monotheistic religions, rather than just Islam.
That's significant because Palestinian efforts to claim that shrines
such ‎as the Temple Mount and even the Western Wall are ‎exclusively
Muslim were part of a campaign of incitement that led to the recent
‎‎"stabbing intifada." Perhaps just as significant is that the new texts
would also seek ‎to correct gender bias that was part of the old
books.‎

But rather than welcome
reform, the Palestinian Authority has reacted with fury. ‎Last week,
the PA announced that it was suspending ties with UNRWA over the
‎proposed changes, which have yet to be formally announced. It said the
revisions ‎to the curriculum were an "affront to the Palestinian people,
its history and ‎struggles" and that the suspension would continue
until the agency's "positions are ‎corrected."‎

The PA Education
Ministry issued the following statement:‎ "Any distortion of the
Palestinian curriculum is a flagrant violation of the laws of the ‎host
country, and any change to any letter to appease any party is a betrayal
of the ‎Palestinian narrative and the right of the Palestinian people
under occupation to ‎preserve its identity and struggle.‎"

The implications of the PA position for the prospects for peace in this or future ‎generations cannot be overestimated.‎

For more than a
century, Palestinian national identity has been inextricably tied to the
war on Zionism. Throughout two decades of failed peace negotiations,
the ‎supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority has consistently rejected
Israeli offers ‎of independence that would obligate it to recognize the
legitimacy of the Jewish ‎state within any borders. Any chance that
this will change rests not so much on ‎more Israeli concessions but on a
sea change in Palestinian political culture. ‎Leaving aside the role of
Hamas, unless the PA's future leaders are able to embrace ‎peace
without fear that doing so will be seen as a betrayal, the failure of
more talks ‎is foreordained. UNRWA's proposed changes are a step in the
right direction. The ‎PA's opposition is more proof that it is an
obstacle to any hope for a better life for ‎both Israeli and Palestinian
children.‎

Jonathan S. Tobin is the opinion editor of JNS.org and a contributing writer for ‎National Review. Twitter @jonathans_tobin.‎

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=18863 Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Allied leaders had information about Nazi atrocities from the camps themselves and from resistance fighters, researcher Dan Plesch tells Independent newspaper • Member of Britain's war cabinet said Jews should not be considered a "special case."

One of the documents proving
the Allies knew about the Holocaust but did nothing to stop it

An aerial view of the
Auschwitz extermination camp

|

Photo credit: Gettyimages

The apathetic response of the world to the
horrors of the Holocaust has been researched and covered extensively,
but newly uncovered documents reveal just how deep the apathy ran.

The documents, which have come to light for
the first time in 70 years after being archived in the United Nations,
reveal that the Allies were aware of the atrocities perpetrated against
the Jews of Europe much earlier in the war than previously thought --
but did nothing to stop them.

Based on the newly available U.N. documents,
researcher Dan Plesch of the University of London wrote the book "Human
Rights After Hitler." Britain's Independent newspaper interviewed
Plesch, who said that prior to the discovery of the new material, the
prevailing belief had been that the Allies found out about the slaughter
of Jews in 1944, when they learned about the Nazi concentration camps.

But Plesch explains that the Allies knew about
the Holocaust some two and a half years earlier. They had received
reports both from the camps themselves and from the resistance movements
in Nazi-occupied areas.

According to the Independent interview, by
December 1942, the U.S., Britain, and the Soviet Union knew that at
least 2 million Jews had been murdered by the Nazi regime and that 5
million more were in mortal danger.

Moreover, at that stage, the three countries
were already working on compiling a base of evidence to charge Nazi
dictator Adolf Hitler with war crimes, but they still took no steps to
intervene.

The Independent reports that in March 1943,
Viscount Cranborne, a British peer and minister in Prime Minister
Winston Churchill's war cabinet, said that Jews should not be considered
a "special case." Cranborne said the British Empire was already full of
refugees and could not offer safety to any more.

Plesch told the Independent that anti-Semites
in the U.S. State Department rejected efforts by then-U.S. envoy to the
United Nations War Crimes Commission Herbert Pell to help the Jews of
Europe. Pell later said that some members of the State Department were
concerned about what would happen to U.S.-German trade relations if the
U.S. pressed ahead with war crimes charges against Nazi leaders. This
public claim by Pell prompted the State Department to bring the Nazi
leadership to trial at the Nuremberg proceedings.

"Among the reason given by the U.S. and
British policymakers for curtailing prosecutions of Nazis was the
understanding that at least some of them would be needed to rebuild
Germany and confront communism, which at the time was seen as a greater
danger," Plesch writes in "Human Rights After Hitler."

Plesch told the Independent that before the
U.N. documents on which he based his book were made public, anyone who
wanted to review them needed not only permission from their own
government, but also from the U.N. secretary general. Generally, a few
years would elapse between the bureaucratic runaround and the time
researchers were actually granted access to the documents.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha
Powers was the official who initiated the move to open the documents on
the Allies' knowledge of the Holocaust.

According to Plesch, the new evidence provides a "cartload of nails to hammer into the coffins" of Holocaust denial.

Eli Leon and Israel Hayom StaffSource: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=41843&hp=1 Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

As U.S. reviews its policy on Iran, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson cautions that Tehran could become a threat like North Korea if left unchecked • Tillerson warns that all threats posed by Iran must be addressed, "and it is clear there are many."

U.S. Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson

|

Photo credit: Reuters

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on
Wednesday accused Iran of "alarming ongoing provocations" to destabilize
countries in the Middle East as the Trump administration launched a
review of its policy toward Tehran.

Tillerson told reporters the review, which he
announced on Tuesday, would not only look at Tehran's compliance with a
2015 nuclear deal but also its behavior in the region which he said
undermined U.S. interests in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon.

His tough words matched those of U.S. Defense
Secretary Jim Mattis, who said in a visit to Saudi Arabia on Wednesday
that Iran's destabilizing influence would have to be overcome to end the
conflict in Yemen.

U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the review
to evaluate whether suspension of sanctions related to the nuclear deal
was "vital to the national security interests of the United States,"
Tillerson said

Though there was no sign the Trump
administration intended to walk away from the deal, Tillerson twice
cautioned that if left unchecked Tehran could become a threat like North
Korea, which is also under pressure over its nuclear ambitions.

In a letter to U.S. House of Representatives
Speaker Paul Ryan released late on Tuesday, Tillerson declared that Iran
was meeting its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal but there were
concerns about Tehran's role as a state sponsor of terrorism.

"A comprehensive Iran policy requires we
address all of the threats posed by Iran, and it is clear there are
many," Tillerson told reporters at the State Department.

Tillerson said the 2015 nuclear deal between
Iran and six world powers failed "to achieve the objective of a
non-nuclear Iran and only delays their goal of becoming a nuclear
state."

Iran has yet to comment on the Trump
administration's review, but Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei warned in November that Tehran would retaliate if the United
States breached the nuclear agreement.

Tillerson said one of the mistakes in the way
the agreement was put together was that it ignored all the other serious
threats Iran posed outside of its nuclear program.

"That is why we have to look at Iran in a very
comprehensive way in terms of the threat it poses in all areas of the
region and the world," he added.

"This deal represents the same failed approach
of the past that brought us to the current imminent threat we face from
North Korea," Tillerson said of the nuclear deal.

The nuclear agreement, negotiated during
Barack Obama's presidency, placed limitations on Iran's nuclear program
in exchange for lifting economic sanctions against Iran.

Tillerson's notice to Congress was part of a
90-day process in which the president has to certify that Iran is
complying with the nuclear accord. It is the first update under the
Trump administration.

The next test of Trump's attitude toward the
nuclear deal will be in May when he must decide whether to extend
sanctions waivers for Iran first signed by Obama.

During his presidential campaign, Trump called
the agreement "the worst deal ever negotiated" and said he would review
it once he reached office.

The European Union's foreign policy chief,
Frederica Mogherini, said last month after meetings with senior Trump
administration officials she was reassured in the talks that the U.S.
was committed to fully implementing the deal.

Reuters and Israel Hayom StaffSource: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=41861 Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

Confronting the rogue regime does not have to mean inevitable all-out war.

North Korea has conducted five nuclear weapons tests, including two last year, and is reported to be preparing for another nuclear test in the near future. The rogue regime has also conducted dozens of ballistic missile tests. The Obama administration managed to push fairly tough sanctions resolutions through the United Nations Security Council, but North Korea has ignored them. During the last years of his term, Obama also reportedly ordered cyberattacks against the regime to sabotage its missile launches. The cyberattacks may have slowed down North Korea’s progress, but have far from eliminated the threat. Otherwise, Obama’s policy amounted to what became known as “strategic patience.” That is where things stood when Donald Trump took over as president.

Since the Trump administration has taken office, the rhetoric between North Korea and the United States over North Korea's accelerating nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program has ratcheted up to unprecedented levels. Every day brings new threats and counter-threats. Alarms have been sounded that misunderstandings of each other's intentions can lead to dangerous miscalculations, allowing perceived provocations by each side to potentially spin out of control. However, apocalyptic fears of an imminent, all-out nuclear war would appear to be premature, despite bluster from the North Korean regime that “nuclear war could break out at any moment.”

President Trump himself, along with senior administration officials, have cautioned North Korea to tread carefully. Tweeting that “North Korea is looking for trouble,” the president warned that the United States will solve the North Korea problem unilaterally if necessary.

Vice President Mike Pence, while visiting South Korea and the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, warned North Korea's leaders not to test President Trump's resolve or "the strength of the armed forces of the United States in this region." Vice President Pence emphasized that the "era of strategic patience is over" with North Korea.

The Trump administration is right to be concerned about North Korea's unceasing drive to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile fitted with a nuclear warhead that is capable of striking the United States mainland. Although, according to best estimates, it will take North Korea several years to successfully develop, test and deploy the required technical capability to launch such missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland, the clock is ticking. Moreover, Japan, South Korea and other U.S. allies in the Asia Pacific region are already at risk from North Korea’s short and intermediate range missiles. North Korea’s last missile test on Sunday was a dud, possibly as a result of a U.S. initiated cyberattack, but North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Han Song-Ryol remained defiant. He declared, "We'll be conducting more missile tests on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis." It would be reckless to simply hope that the existential threat to the region, and ultimately to the United States, from North Korea’s expanding nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program will simply go away on its own or could be stopped in its tracks by cyberattacks alone.

While maintaining that all options, including military ones, are on the table, President Trump is deliberately remaining cryptic when discussing what he specifically might do in response to any further provocations from the North Korean regime. Nevertheless, the president's willingness to take decisive, sharply focused military actions in Syria and Afghanistan have sent a credible message of U.S. resolve to North Korea's leadership, while achieving tactical successes in both theaters of operation. The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, accompanied by three other warships in its strike force, will be arriving in the Sea of Japan off the Korean Peninsula next week, after some initial delay in their deployment.

Unfortunately, there is no sign that the North Korean regime will back down even in the face of such show of U.S. military strength. Rather, the isolated regime and its paranoid leader Kim Jong-un are likely to hunker down. North Korea, which sees itself in a struggle for survival, is willing to bet everything on its nuclear and ballistic missile program as part of a high stakes poker game to keep its enemies at bay at all cost.

Thus, there is no easy way to deal with North Korea’s nuclear threat. Its missiles are well hidden in scattered locations throughout the country. A preemptive military strike by the United States would be unlikely to wipe them all out. Yet such a strike will almost certainly precipitate a devastating retaliatory attack – either by nuclear or massive conventional arms – on South Korea and Japan. Our bases and soldiers in the region will be in immediate peril. While the United States military would no doubt ultimately prevail in a military showdown with North Korea, it would almost certainly come at an unacceptable cost in civilian lives.

At the other extreme, trying to negotiate with North Korea some sort of nuclear freeze, much less denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, will prove futile. Going as far back as Bill Clinton’s presidency, prior administrations have tried the negotiations route, only to be suckered into useless talks or giving North Korea money in return for promises to halt its nuclear program that North Korea broke time and time again. Prior administrations have also failed to persuade China to use its full economic leverage over North Korea to get its ally to at least freeze its nuclear and ballistic missile program.

In short, the North Korean regime is willing to play extreme brinksmanship in order to stave off the invasion it fears from the United States and its allies and preserve its own power from any perceived external or internal threats. It also continues to be able to close off its populace from outside influences, as it indoctrinates them into believing that economic sacrifices are necessary in order for the country to maintain a sufficient war footing to survive.

President Trump appears to be listening to his senior national security team, who are urging restraint accompanied by muscular diplomacy. In addition to the show of military force and demonstrated willingness to use it, President Trump has reportedly leaned harder on China to use its influence with North Korea than any prior administration had done. The subject came up at his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this month and during a follow-up telephone conversation. President Trump expressed willingness to be flexible on trade issues with China in return for concrete actions by China to deter North Korea. Otherwise, Mr. Trump said, he would solve the North Korean problem himself. His combination of carrots and sticks have already yielded some positive results.

The Chinese Communist Party’s official paper, the People’s Daily, advised North Korea to take President Trump at his word. “Not only [is] Washington brimming with confidence and arrogance following the missile attacks on Syria, but Trump is also willing to be regarded as a man who honors his promises,” it said. The United States “doesn’t plan to co-exist with a nuclear-armed Pyongyang. Pyongyang should avoid making mistakes at this time.”

China has also reportedly sent more than 100,000 troops to North Korea’s border. It is most likely the case that China's troop deployment is in part intended to deter any direct major U.S. military action against North Korea that China fears could topple the regime, possibly result in a unified Western-oriented Korean Peninsula, and cause a flood of migrants to try to enter China. At the same time, however, Chinese forces would be poised to enter North Korea and take control themselves if need be. They would "be in a position to force a coup or force Kim's hand" to disarm, according to Sim Tack, a North Korea expert at Stratfor, as quoted by Business Insider. China would act, if it deemed necessary, to "make sure North Korea still exists and serves Chinese interests while it stops acting as a massive bullseye to the US," he added. In other words, China might opt for a pliant regime it can fully control rather than continue to prop up the out of control megalomaniac Kim Jong-un.

In addition, China has recently applied more economic pressure on the North Korean regime. China’s customs authorities ordered trading companies to return coal imported from North Korea, sending North Korean ships laden with coal back home. That represents a huge blow to North Korea’s export business and its ability to get its hands on hard currency. If North Korea persists with more provocative actions such as nuclear weapons tests, warned another Chinese newspaper closely aligned with official government thinking, restrictions on oil imports to North Korea may come next.

While welcoming China’s cooperation to date, President Trump needs to deploy a variety of measures to counter the North Korean threat short of a full-scale pre-emptive attack. These may include enhanced cyberwarfare, deploying more robust missile defense systems in the region and in the United States, cutting off any banking firms doing business with North Korean entities from the U.S. banking system, and maintaining a major naval presence in the region with the capability of shooting down any missiles launched from North Korea aimed at any U.S. ally or base.

All-out war with North Korea is not inevitable unless we foolishly drop our guard.

debkafile’s
military sources report that the Syrian air force will operate
henceforth under Russian protection and behind the advanced Russian
S-300 and S-400 air defense shield without fear of US reprisals.

Syria has moved all its fighter aircraft to the Russian Hmeimim air
base in Latakia three weeks after 59 US Tomahawk cruise missiles knocked
out one-fifth of its air force at the Shayrat base, in retaliation for a
chemical attack on civilians in Idlib. This was reported Wednesday
night, April 19, by the Pentagon. The Russian high command in Syria has
its seat at that base.debkafile’s
military sources report that the Syrian air force will operate
henceforth under Russian protection and behind the advanced Russian
S-300 and S-400 air defense shield without fear of US reprisals.

President Vladimir Putin’s response to the Trump administration’s
call to distance Moscow from the Assad regime is therefore a flat
rejection. He is instead fortifying Russian support for that regime.

The upsurge of Russian-US military tension places at risk the
operational coordination accords prevailing between the air forces of
Russia, the US and Israel in Syrian skies.

Syrian operational staff officers working in Hmeimim will now have
access to the advanced Russian surveillance instruments tracking the
movements of all foreign aircraft moving through Syrian air
space. Syrian intelligence officers will also be close to Russian SIGINT
facilities which the Russian spy agency GRU has installed there. In
other words, by a single move, the Russians have substantially upgraded
the Syrian air force’s operational and intelligence capabilities.

How does this affect the Syrian and Iranian air freight traffic
ferrying military supplies from Iran? Where will they deliver their
cargoes? Will they too be allowed to land at the Russian base in
Latakia? If they are, the Israeli air force will be prevented from
cutting down the flow of Iranian weapons for Hizballah. The new move
more or less buries the Russian-Israeli agreements covering Syrian
skies.
The Pentagon disclosure came ironically just hours after a senior
Israeli military officer confidently informed military correspondents in
Tel Aviv that the mechanism introduced for Russian-Israeli air force
coordination in Syria had been successfully adopted by other nations
operating in Syria, such as Turkey and the United States. He reported
that the arrangement included reciprocal visits once every two months by
heads of the operations divisions of the two armies.
These visits will probably go the same way now as the entire arrangement.

debkaFileSource: http://debka.com/article/26016/Syria-moves-all-its-fighter-jets-to-Russian-baseFollow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter http://debka.com/article/26016/Syria-moves-all-its-fighter-jets-to-Russian-baseCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

The pundits were so busy misreporting the election, they did not listen to what was actually happening in the campaign.

The Russians are off the hook. The chattering geniuses have discovered a new villain to blame for the shattering demise of their heroine, Hillary.

White guys did it.

The same reporters who cheered Hillary’s every misstep and doubted every Trump triumph are now trying to convince us that Hillary would be wearing the presidential pants suits today if only her staffers had not forgotten about white voters.

That is what we learned from Shattered, the latest 2016 campaign obituary that crashed into bookstores this week.

The pundits were so busy misreporting the election, they did not listen to what was actually happening in the campaign. If they had, they would know that far from forgetting white voters, Hillary and her Klan actively demonized them every day.

Do you really need reminding? Then let’s do it:

During the NBC debate, Lester Holt asked Hillary if cops were racist: “Lester, I think implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police. I think unfortunately too many of us in our great country jump to conclusions about each other. And therefore, all of us need to be asking hard questions” about race.

Hillary was happy to share her solutions to hidden white racism with America’s pied paper of racial reconciliation -- when he was not starting deadly race riots -- Al Sharpton: “White Americans need to do a much better job of listening when African Americans talk about the seen and unseen barriers you face everyday,” quoth Hillary to cheers of “amen” from the black audience. “We need to recognize our privilege and practice humility.”

While Hillary was using her carefully crafted, poll tested talking points on the trail, Hillary supporters were taking her message of relentless white racism to rougher places, in rougher tones.

In Baltimore, the black mayor and state’s attorney -- Hillary surrogates -- were excusing and even encouraging black violence following the death of a drug dealer in police custody.

Quarterback Colin Kaepernick was forcing white football fans to listen to his sideline protests of white racism that grew and grew and grew as more and more fans stayed away.

At the Democrat National Convention, 15,000 delegates stood up to chant "Black Lives Matter" to honor the mothers of several black people who died breaking the law, some threatening police officers.

Let’s not forget the primaries.

Hillary, Bernie, and Mr. No Name from Maryland spent a huge chunk of time reminding voters how black people are victims of white racists.

Will anyone ever forget how a governor and major candidate for president -- Martin O’Malley -- cowered before a Black Lives Matter interviewer, apologizing for not recognizing the blatant racism of his claim that “all lives matter.”

Or Bernie Sanders in Seattle, cowering again, as Black Lives Matter leaders stormed his podium, took his microphone, and sent him to corner as they lectured him and his audience on their racism? All they forgot was the dunce cap.

Soon after, Bernie hired a Black Lives Matter leader as a spokeswoman. He also hooked up with Killer Mike to introduce him at campaign events. Killer’s major claim to fame was a song asking “when you niggas gonna unite and kill the police, motherf*ckas?”

Killer’s second claim to fame was convincing Fox reporter Brian Kilmeade the song was not really about killing cops and Killer Mike was really a “nice guy.”

Whether Hillary was arguing with Bernie and Martin about who was really most down the cause, or later during the general election, white racism and black victimization were central themes of her campaign.

Baltimore, Milwaukee, Charlotte, and Ferguson were just four of the cities hit with major black race riots -- all to the cheers of Hillary supporters and their satraps in the press who insisted the violent protests were not just justified, they were really “largely peaceful.”

And they thought white voters would ignore that? Just as they were supposed to ignore how black crime and violence against white people is wildly out of proportion -- documented in that scintillating #1 Amazon bestseller Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry?

NPR hoped they would, doing story after story about how Trump was “having trouble with white voters.”In Dallas, after a black person killed five cops, Hillary reminded Wolf Blitzer of CNN: “The facts are clear,” she said. “Too many black Americans have been killed in encounters with police over matters that should not have led to that action being taken.”

“And frankly,” she told Wolf, the federal government should be going after the “systemic racism which is a reality and to go after implicit bias.”

Hillary promised Wolf she would “speak out against systemic racism every chance I get.” Mission accomplished.What reporters did not go after were 300 black people in Dallas looting a 7-11 then celebrating -- dancing -- in the parking lot shortly after the murders. All on video.

Another Hillary surrogate, President Obama, picked up the Hillary mantra when he too reminded his national audience of white racism during a eulogy for the cops killed by a black person who hated white people.

Even her vice-presidential pick was a racial move -- Tim Kane’s lackluster personality was supposed to be overcome by his only claim to fame: he attended a black Catholic Church in Richmond.

This is a long list, a smattering of which I have gathered on my YouTube channel for you masochists and amnesiacs out there. Check it out here.

In the end, Hillary’s constant demonization of white racism was not enough to fire up her black base. Black voters in big cities in swing states just stayed home. They were just not that into her.

In Hillary’s game of identity politics, she lost because black voters wanted the real thing, a black candidate. Not a pale imitation.

No amount of racial groveling could change that. Though Hillary’s shadowy Russians seemed to make a lot of people forget about it soon after the polls closed and the excuses began.

Hillary’s demonization got the full attention of a lot of white people, regardless of whether they admitted it to pollsters. In the same areas where black people shrugged her off like an old coat, white people decided they were not going to vote for a candidate who hated them.

One pollster figured it out. Appearing on the NPR affiliate in New York, a Democrat pollster said: “There’s one really fascinating thing that keeps popping up with Donald Trump. He wins counties with large African American populations. We are seeing it over and over again. And he’s not winning the black vote because there are not many black voters in Republican primaries. He’s winning whites who live near blacks and we see it over and over again.”

Sociologists have a name for it, Routine Activity Theory: white people in black neighborhoods can routinely expect to be the victims of crime and violence.

Did Hillary think they would forget that?

White voters answered loud and clear and fully informed: Nyet.

Colin Flaherty is the author ofDon’t Make the Black Kids Angry and creator of a YouTube channel that keeps getting shut down because YouTube thinks exposing black violence is a bad thing. But we persevere here:Colin Flaherty’s Video on this story.

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/04/shattered_a_new_fairy_tale_about_how_hillary_forgot_white_voters.html Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

If there is agreement that a life is human,
the individual's right to choose is not final.

If there is agreement that a
life is human, the individual's right to choose is not final. The state
has a responsibility to protect innocent life.

In other words, the decision in Roe v. Wade declares that the
individual right to choose abortion is not absolute, but that there are
times when the state can interfere in order to promote "its interest in
the potentiality of human life."

Imagine you are driving on a foggy night and you see a dark figure
ahead. It could be a fallen branch. It might even be a little deer, or,
God forbid, a little child. Do you keep on driving full speed and crash
through it, or put on the brakes? If you think it might be a human person, either dead or alive, what should you do?

Most of us would say that even if we are uncertain, we should stop
and check. We should give the benefit of the doubt to something that might be human, and, if it is, treat it with care.

I am sure that most everyone would stop and do everything he or she could to protect anything that might be human. But a recent article for Gatestone suggests that society has no
obligation to interfere with a woman who chooses to get an abortion.
The article concedes that question of when life begins is complex, and
suggests that after the first trimester the question becomes more
difficult. But it fails to distinguish between early and late abortions.
The author criticizes "anti-abortion right-to-life advocates" who say
that the state should sometimes step in:

"They do not want any woman to have the right to choose abortion for herself. They want to have the state choose for her -- to deny her the right to choose between giving birth to an unwanted child and having an abortion."

According to the article, the question comes down to who
should make decisions about life and death -- the pregnant woman or the
"impersonal state." Of course, conservatives agree that in most cases
there should be individual freedom, particularly when it comes to very
personal choices about pregnancy and children. But while conservatives
differ on public policy for abortions in the first trimester and in
cases of incest and rape (which according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute
total less than one percent), they agree with some liberals that the
state should protect life in the last trimester. Perhaps a majority of
liberals, however, would say the state should never intervene on
abortion, even when the baby is healthy and viable in the last
trimester.

Liberals and conservatives generally agree that the state must
intervene to protect innocent human life when it is threatened, and so
should prosecute and punish murderers who take the lives of innocent
children or adults. So, the individual's right to choose to protect or
end a life is not absolute. If there is agreement that a life is human,
the individual's right to choose is not final. The state has a
responsibility to protect innocent life.

But what about the fetus? Is it a human person? Pro-choice advocates
suggest that in the first trimester it is not, at least for the woman
who does not want a baby. As the author of the earlier article puts it,
"[H]er unwanted fetus is not yet a 'life' -- at least for the first
trimester or so -- unless she chooses to give birth to it."

There is no comment on the personhood of the fetus after those first
three months, except to say that "the right of a woman to choose --
abortion or life -- remains solidly ensconced in our jurisprudence."
This appears to claim that the right to choose abortion is absolute, and that this is ensured by our recent jurisprudence.

But is that true? In Gonzalez v. Carhart (2007) the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (2003).
This meant that the Court believed it was constitutional for states to
restrict abortions in the last three months of pregnancy. In these
cases, then, the Court declared that the right to choose abortion is not absolute.

Was it irrational or unconstitutional for the Court to treat the
fetus in the last trimester as a human being to be protected by law? Not
at all. It had precedent in the monumental decision that is commonly,
but mistakenly, assumed to grant absolute license to abortion: Roe v. Wade permits states to restrict abortions during the second trimester "in ways that are reasonably related to maternal health." After viability (which today is about the fifth month),

"the State in promoting its interest in the potentiality
of human life may, if it chooses, regulate, and even proscribe, abortion
except where it is necessary, in appropriate medical judgment, for the
preservation of the life or health of the mother."

In other words, the decision, which the article calls "the law of the
land," declares that the individual right to choose abortion is not
absolute, but that there are times when the state can interfere in order
to promote "its interest in the potentiality of human life."

This is common sense. A fetus after the fifth month can survive
outside the womb, and will be recognized immediately upon birth as a human baby.

One Pew finding notes that 70% of Americans think a woman "should have the right to control her own reproduction." Yet a 2016 Pew survey found that only 29% of Americans believe that abortion should be legal under any
circumstances, and 50% think it should be legal "only under certain
circumstances." The vast majority of Americans therefore reject an absolute right to choose abortion.

Conservatives differ on whether or how abortion should be restricted
in the first two trimesters, and in cases of rape and incest. Yet many
liberals should be able to agree with conservatives that in the last
trimester, when most of the unborn are viable, the state has a
compelling interest in protecting life. Even if some are uncertain of
the personhood of the fetus at this late stage, it seems reasonable and
right to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Gerald R. McDermottis Anglican Chair of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School. He is the editor of The New Christian Zionism and author of Israel Matters.Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10202/right-to-choose Follow Middle East and Terrorism on TwitterCopyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.